


and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

by griners



Category: The Blacklist (US TV)
Genre: F/M, but now they need to know it you feel?, even cooper knows it, keenler is all that is good and precious in this angsty angsty world, written from liz's perspective but every time she oggles ressler i imagine it's me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:07:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29963409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/griners/pseuds/griners
Summary: A love story in the making, if only with a few misunderstandings. Or: Liz can't stop hearing Ressler's moans late at night.
Relationships: Elizabeth Keen & Donald Ressler, Elizabeth Keen/Donald Ressler
Comments: 19
Kudos: 54





	and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

**Author's Note:**

> title credit to e.e. cummings
> 
> what else is new? keenler is all consuming and I have yet to have written a single piece of fanfiction that isn't in the littlest bit angsty. a kind word to resslawx on tumblr for the dance idea and all around coolness. enjoy my sweets! drop a comment if the fic should continue into domestic!keenler

“I never dated friends,” Liz lets out one night, when they’re all sharing dinner in the war room. They’re waiting on a lead from a stake out and are far too wired to go home. “I just never wanted to risk losing them, you know? Like actual, true friends. If you date them and it goes sideways, who are you going to call when you’re heartbroken? The one who broke your heart before that?” Liz snickers, shakes her head, ruffles her chopsticks through the bottom of her cup of noodles to get the last mushroom stuck in there.

Aram looks at Park, who looks at Ressler, who is looking straight at Liz. “What if it doesn’t go sideways?” Ressler asks, and Aram tries not to widen his eyes too much.

Liz meets his eye for a second, but they quickly change the subject after that.

(This is where it starts to change).

.

Agnes is at a sleepover when Liz orders two pizzas for dinner. She tries to talk herself into the plan that one of them is for lunch the next day, even though she ordered peperoni on the second pizza and she _hates_ peperoni, but hey, maybe this time around she will learn to like it? She shakes her head in disbelief at herself, absolutely certain that she must be going out of her mind because she has been working at the FBI for almost a decade now and is somehow trying to fool herself about her pizza tastes in a dreadful attempt to fool herself altogether. She fidgets with the 20 dollars on one hand and the phone on the other, foot tapping lightly on the carpeted floor in time with the clock on the wall. _It is late already_ , she thinks before groaning in shame at herself.

“Screw it-“ she gets up as the bell rings, but her mind is decided. She meets the delivery boy out front, who seems rather confused that she’s putting on a jacket as she gives him her money and lets him keep the change.

“Uhm, did you need this delivered somewhere else or?” but she’s halfway down the hall with the two pizzas in hand, doing a marvelous balancing job whilst brusquely looking for her car keys in her purse.

Truth is, this is stupid. She should have just called and asked if Ressler wanted pizza. She should have called and made a lame excuse about watching a movie or just needing to talk and she would bring pizza and beers and they would share smiles they don’t particularly give anyone else, and it would be _normal_ , but yesterday he got a concussion and her heart skipped three beats when she saw him unconscious and another couple when he woke up with his hand in hers and squeezed it instead of letting go. So maybe things aren’t _normal_ , but acting like they aren’t just makes it something it isn’t, and Liz really, really needs pizza right now. Because he was unconscious. And she feared she would never make a nauseous face at his peperoni crap again. (She remembers a time long ago when she told him the prospect of living without him was terrifying, and she wouldn’t tell him that now, and that somehow makes it worse).

She may be more fucked up than she had originally thought.

Liz thinks, _okay. Normal. Okay._ She sets the boxes down on the passenger seat and gets behind the wheel, starting up the car and cranking up the heater. It’s November and it’s cold and she feels like she’s sweating all over, her fingers hot and burning as she steers away from her apartment building.

Before settling into traffic, she presses speed dial #1 and hopes for the best.

 _You’ve reached the voicemail of Donald Ressler_ , her phone answers mockingly, and she lets her head fall back against the seat. Her two options quicky form in front of her: drive back and eat by herself, or show up unexpected and deal with the consequences of how _lame_ that would be. _Hi, I know you weren’t answering but I needed you and that’s a valid excuse, right?_ And what is she even thinking with that second option-

Liz groans again, grips the steering wheel tighter, and takes a breath. She tries not to focus too hard on why she’s acting like this, let alone what _this_ means, and quietly admits that she really, really hates peperoni.

“I’ll just leave it at his doorstep if he doesn’t answer,” she says to her car, looking like she’s going insane. “Because that’s reasonable. Totally.”

Her car never answers back, and she’s actually grateful for that.

His apartment isn’t far away, and surely not far enough for her to change her mind for the fifth time. The other four weren’t successful, and she’s over analyzing it, she realizes. And this is not something partners do, she also realizes. So, she takes another breath and makes a final decision to stop being so _not normal_ before parking in front of his building and getting out of the car determinedly. She fetches the pizzas with one hand and dials his number for the second time, but it still goes to voicemail and she tries to quiet the small drop of disappointment running up her spine.

She manages an unsure smile as she walks down the well-lit floor to his door. A companiable movie night is exactly what she needs, she finds, and Don is just the companion she wants at the moment. _Ressler_ , she corrects, and her step falters slightly. What is wrong with her.

A flash of him lying on a hospital bed enters her head violently as she stops at his door, her breath leaving her for an all too excruciating moment, and she has to shake herself forcefully to get that vision out. _He’s not going to die_ , she thinks, _he’s not going to die_ , she repeats as she knocks on his door, _he’s not going to die_ , she continues because he doesn’t answer right away.

Or at all, she grasps after a full minute.

She frowns a little, inspecting her hand as if it weren’t functioning properly in its duty to produce a single knock. Her other hand protests as the grease from the pizzas seeps through the carton, _that damn peperoni_ , and she chuckles stupidly at the thought that, you know, _maybe he just didn’t hear you._

She knocks again, and after 10 seconds she moves put down the pizzas and ring the bell. She rises back and moves to the offending little plastic squares on the side of the door, contemplating which one is the hallway light switch and which one will get him to actually hear her when- oh-

Liz’s breathing slows down, and her lips open minutely. Her forehead leans quietly against the door and no. No, no. _This isn’t happening this isn’t happening this isn’t happening-_

 _Oh but it is,_ the deep, tortured part of her mind laughs at her because yes, it has been a while for her (a _long_ while, that part reminds her) but she can still make out the sounds of sex, even if it is through a door and through a somewhat affected hearing after one too many bombs.

“Fuck my life,” she whispers, her hand inches away from the bell and her forehead hitting the door in a thud. “Fuck. My. Life.” She repeats for good measure as a moan breaks out somewhere on the other side of the door, _a woman’s moan_ at that, and she wants to laugh. Deliriously. She wants to lie down and laugh until her ribs are hurting and she is wheezing next to the _fucking peperoni_ – another moan – and the _fucking_ spinach and pepper bells pizza that she has no idea how she even ended up ordering and-

Her eyes pop out of her head when this time, it’s a man who’s moaning. Something hard and cold presses at her lower back, and something stings on the nape of her neck, a reminder of sorts that from now on, Ressler’s moans are something that will haunt even her most profound sleep. She is frozen in her place as he repeats the sound, louder this time, and an inexcusable will to cry creeps up her throat and down her legs, her whole extremities numb and tingling in simultaneous protest.

“I have to get out of here.” And she does, scrambling away from his door and his hallway and this place, this fucking horrible experience altogether, but life likes to mock her sometimes and she comes back a minute later to retrieve the pizzas she left at his door. The irony isn’t lost on her, that being the original plan and all.

She leaves before she has the time to hear him groan louder than he means to. Or at least that’s what she tells herself.

The sting on the nape of her neck moves to her temples, her lips, the back of her eyes. She thanks whatever god still looks out for her amid this shitty, shitty life that tomorrow is Saturday, and the ride back to her place feels suffocating all the same.

She gives the pizzas to a homeless man on the street who looks at her in the purest form of appreciation, and thinks he may be helping her more than she helped him.

.

“You look tense.” Ressler says with no kind of premise as he sits down in front of her. Her shoulders are hunched and her face is confused but focused, so much so he’s fairly sure she didn’t even acknowledge him. “Hey,” he repeats, moving to grab her hand, but she retreats it far too quickly.

“What?” she asks, coming to meet his eyes, and he can’t help but think Liz isn’t really that distracted. “Sorry, did you say something?”

“Uhm, no.” he frowns, pulls back his hand. “Nothing important. You ok?”

She nods, smiles tight lipped, looks back down at the files. Ressler stands and contemplates closing the door with both of them inside.

He leaves instead.

.

“I am not leaving.” He offers with a finality that was becoming increasingly hard to argue with. Or, at least, hard for her, with the addition of a twisted ankle and a headache that felt like a constant throb threatening to consume her whole and the stitches on her arm making themselves known as the painkillers wear off.

“Agnes is down for the night. I already ate and-“ the rumble in her stomach chooses this perfect time to roar loudly, and in the aftermath, she has the decency to look ashamed. When did they start lying to each other? She slithers away from the question before she finds more spots to ache. “Okay, maybe I haven’t eaten. But I was getting right to that.”

“You can keep lying while I make you a steak.” He relents as he lets himself in, shrugging out of his overcoat and placing it neatly on a chair nearby. It doesn’t feel like he’s relenting anything.

“I don’t have steaks.” Liz answers dumbly and is rewarded by an amused chuckle.

“I know that. It’s why I brought my own.” He replies, grinning widely as he holds up the bag of groceries in his hand. His grin is so wide it hurts. Liz is torn between crying and eating.

Her stomach rumbles again to help with the decision. She nods mutely as he walks past her into the kitchen, setting up the chopping board and turning on the stove.

“How’s the arm?” he questions conversationally as he chops up some sort of herb – he brought _herbs_ – and her head is banging so loudly at this point she just wants to do something stupid, like ask why he’s talking to her like only half a friend and half a stranger, or ask herself why she’s refusing his help to begin with. The walls of her apartment close in on her, and instead of answering she drags over to her coffee table on one foot, straining to get the pills inside of her purse.

“Liz?” he questions again, raising his head from where it was looking over the stove. She doesn’t halt in her mission, fetching the glass of water she had left on the table and popping two pills into her mouth. She eyes the clock quickly, covering the math and coming to the not-so-happy conclusion that she would probably wake up in the middle of the night in pain as the effect wore off, but she guesses she has no one else to blame but herself for taking the first dosage at nearly 11 p.m.

The world seems to come to a halt after that, and she idly wonders if the pills are _that_ quick to work. They aren’t. The silence is mostly due to the emptiness that suddenly fills her apartment, so sudden that she has to turn back to catch Ressler staring at the coffee table in front of her, one hand grasping a spatula and the other balling into a semi fist at his side.

It comes to her quite quickly, the realization of why he went so quiet, but not quickly enough to hide the tantalizing orange bottle that he seems to have fixated upon.

“I-“ why, _why is she fucking this up so royally_ \- “Ressler, I’m so sorry- what the hell was I- I’m sorry-“

“Don’t.” he responds, pained but firm. His hand loosens up in spasms, and Liz raises from the couch as best as she can, her whole face grimacing in pain. “Liz, it’s ok.”

“No, it’s _not_ -“ she makes her way stubbornly to the other side of the kitchen counter, and they’re now facing each other, the marble feeling more like concrete between them. “That was stupid of me, I’m sorry. I’m cranky and hurting and-“ her tongue slips with the truthiness of that, and she skids to a stop in that train of thought. “I’m having a bad day.” She finishes lamely, but _this is not about you_. “Which is no excuse. I’m sorry.”

“Say sorry one more time and I’ll burn your steak.”

“You wouldn’t do that.” she fires back, a little less playfully than intended. _You wouldn’t do that because you’re always so good to me and why, why were you fucking someone else when I thought you-_

He eyes her intently, his brows pushing together in thought. He purses his lips and turns back to the stove, murmuring “You’re right.” And giving her no pleasure in that whatsoever.

She decides to stop talking in fear she’ll do more damage than good.

They eat mostly in silence, with Ressler stealing a few glances at her during her strenuous task of cutting the steak without forcing her arm too much and dear god, she hopes he doesn’t offer to do it for her because she might just have to accept that offer and embarrass herself further on this never, never ending day.

“Can I ask you something?”

Liz closes her eyes, because she can’t imagine anything good following that. “Shoot.”

“Did I do something wrong?” he asks, his fingers twitching slightly on top of the table. She pretends not to see it.

“No.” Liz answers, forcing herself to be gentle about it. She may be befuddled and in the middle of a mental breakdown, but this is still the kindest, warmest, most beautiful man in her life. And _wow_ , she really needs to get a better grip. “Of course not.” She adds, even managing a smile.

He’s not convinced. “Okay. Because you haven’t come over in like, a month, and I thought-“ he stops, rearranging his large body more comfortably in her chair, and she acutely notices the sound of the fabric of his shirt as it stretches over his arm and the newly exposed skin as he opens another button on his collar, his tie discarded somewhere along with his coat. He opens his mouth once, closes it, shakes his head, and his fingers twitch again. “I thought we were… uhm. Good?” he tries, and for the life of her, she wants to laugh at how comically bad they are at this. Whatever _this_ is, or was, or was becoming.

“We are good.” She nods, bringing another bite of steak to her mouth. His eyes sink on her lips momentarily, and she swallows thickly. “We’re more than good, I mean. You brought me steak.”

 _What is this conversation_ she wants to ask, but she already knows what this is. She just doesn’t know how they got here.

“Okay. Good.” He seems to settle for this, and moves to grab both their plates. She swats his hand away and reminds him that he already cooked dinner, and he smiles half a smile and reminds her she is the injured one.

She thinks this is true, in every meaning of the word.

He helps her change her bandage despite her furious efforts to convince him to let her do it alone, but he keeps going as if he hadn’t heard her, the corners of his mouth tilted up as if her protests were nothing but amusing to him. Afterwards, she offers him the remote and lets him switch channels as the day finally catches up to her, her body sinking so tiredly on the couch that she barely has enough breath to tell him _not_ to grab her leg and hoist it up to rest on his lap.

“It’ll reduce the swelling,” is all Ressler says, and Liz has the inexplicable urge to cry again.

She replays the last few months in her head like a movie, the banter and the jokes and the late nights in the office, that one time she found him sleeping on Cooper’s couch and covered him up and her face was mere inches from his and she’s half sure he was awake when he moved closer to her, the time where Aram asked her if Ressler and her had come clean to HR already and she looked at him more than puzzled as he retreated, wide eyes and full of shame, or the time Park had made a remark about Liz forgetting to look away when Ressler dived into the water to rescue a witness and came out all dripping wet with his suit clinging to his body and-

Honestly, what the hell had she read wrong. What the hell.

She looks at him now, trying to figure it out ( _weren’t we going somewhere? Was I wrong to trust?_ – a chill runs through her brutally at that) and he seems to sense her staring and looks right back, smiling. His hand resting atop her leg squeezes lightly, careful to avoid the bruised area, but he never stops looking at her, and her throat feels cramped and expanding at the same time, something fervently bubbling beneath the surface. She thinks, _I have to stop. This has to stop._

She ignores whatever she thinks she sees in his eyes and smiles back apologetically, claiming sleep has taken over her and asking for his help to get to her room, if only to keep him from suspecting she’s one inch away from bawling beside him.

He doesn’t question her, instead carefully putting her leg back on the ground and then surprising her by slipping one arm beneath her shoulders and another one beneath her knees.

Liz eyes him quizzically, his face much too close to her own, and is reminded of that night in Cooper’s office. He’s still smiling at her, his eyes drifting dangerously close to her lips. “Hang on to me,” he murmurs, and her mind fills with fog for about 3 seconds.

She clasps her arms around his neck and he hoists her up as if she weighted virtually nothing, and the sound of him moaning chooses this particular time to strike full force until she has to close her eyes and press her face into his chest and think _stopstopstopstop-_

“Whatever it is you’re thinking,” he says suddenly, breaking her out of her own reverie. She doesn’t mind, for once. “I need you to remember… I’m not going anywhere.” He sets her down on her bed as he says this, and, if possible, his face is even closer now, and her arms are still around his neck, and she looks up at him, lost and hurt and a little raw at all the statement seems to hold. His eyes sparkle in the dim light slipping in through the window, the green there turning into an almost silver cast. It’s mesmerizing, she muses. 

His hand reaches up to her cheek, which he strokes once, twice, and then moves to kiss her hair lightly. “Goodnight, Liz.”

He rises to full height, making her feel little and fragile. She doesn’t like feeling little and fragile. Ressler walks to the door and only looks back once, closes it lightly behind him, and then the front door with a little more force. After that, she cries.

.

“Agent Keen. Please, sit,” Cooper motions to the chair in front of him and Liz enters his office, taking a seat cautiously. “I see you’ve recovered well.”

“Yes sir.” She nods reassuringly, and her head almost doesn’t hurt when she does that. “Ankle is fully operational, and the arm is healed.”

“Good. Good.” He smiles warmly, fidgeting along the papers in front of him. “And anything else?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Is there anything else you may need to…” he pauses, twisting his hands together and resting them on the desk. “Recover from.”

Liz frowns and looks sideways through the office window, eyes pausing on short blonde hair contrasting with a dark navy suit. He’s in deep conversation with Aram, presumably about their newest case, and Park catches her eye from the war room. She gives Liz a lopsided smirk, and she adverts her gaze.

“No, sir. Everything else is fine. Good. The same.”

She almost believes herself.

.

So she may or may not have clashing, infuriating, conflicting feelings about her partner. And she may or may not have presumed they were retributed, mostly due to – well, everything and everyone around her. And the realization that this is quite possibly not true may or may not cause her serious distress over not being able to cover her heart right back up. She tries, unsuccessfully – she adds 2 extra blankets at night, 1 undershirt beneath her blouse and even starts wearing sunglasses around him when they’re outside. And then Ressler beams at her, guides her with a hand on her back, looks at her like he has a secret. And she’s reminded that the layers aren’t working, after all.

Liz has managed to semi fall for her long-term partner and medium-term best friend, and she never expected to plummet without a safety net to catch her. Breaking bones isn’t fun without someone to break alongside you.

She considers if falling is easier were someone to try and pull you up, and follows this train of thought as she listens to the head of the S.W.A.T. team they just mobilized try to ask for her number in the most subtly non-subtle way.

They’re in front of the empty building they were supposed to be raiding, but expired leads and a crappy sense of timing leave them with just about nothing. Mark Philips, the head of the unit, has been debriefing her over the whole of nothingness they came across, as if she hadn’t realized that herself, going into extensive detail about the tactic they used to approach this innocent, hollow structure.

She would hurl if he wasn’t mildly attractive and her self-esteem wasn’t plummeting alongside her.

“So uhm,” he continues, and she can’t help but think _finally, just get it over with so I can say no_ , but they are interrupted by a tall, restless figure approaching them from the side. Of course.

“Ah, agent Ressler!” Mark hurriedly greets, “I was just finishing debriefing agent Keen here.”

“I see that.” Ressler says. He looks over him briefly before turning to Liz. “You ready to go?”

Liz can’t help but think how _huge_ he looks standing beside her, hands on his hips and eyes sharp as a knife, the poster image of someone larger than life and ready to consume her. She thinks, _how am I supposed to. To. Stop?_

“Yeah, just-“

“Actually-“ Mark interrupts, and the hair on the back of her head bristles somewhat. “If I could have one last word.” And he beams now, brightly, showing an almost perfect set of teeth that give his face a much younger appearance. Liz is suddenly not completely bothered by his presence. “Alone.” He adds when Ressler doesn’t move.

Liz clears her throat as Ressler looks at her quizzically, as if saying _are you done with this clown?_ But she’s in a mood to not be done with this clown – S.W.A.T. team leader – that soon, because she’s pretty sure her slow burn love story isn’t really heading towards a bonfire anytime soon and she has things to do, needs to fulfil, a self-esteem to pick up the pieces from before she cuts herself in anymore shards of unforgiving glass. And so, she very politely asks him to wait by the car, and she could swear surprise was only one of the multitude of expressions that crossed Ressler’s face in the span of a second.

He takes one last look at Mark before walking towards the car and slamming the door shut.

“So, as I was saying,” he beams again. “I don’t know when I’d have the pleasure to work with you again, agent Keen. Is there any chance I could get your number?”

And there it is. Is this really what she has been missing for the past 10 or so years? A white set of teeth and one shy butterfly flapping its wings around frantically because she failed to call in the calvary?

She shakes her head at herself, regretting asking Ressler to wait by the car. As much as she was capable of feeling flattered, she really wasn’t capable of much else in this situation.

“Actually, Mark, as tempting as that is,” she smiles for good measure, and poor Mark doesn’t seem to realize where this is headed. “I’m gonna have to say no.” She squints. “Really sorry.”

She sees his eyes deflate of the hope he had built up over the course of the conversation, and she almost feels bad for him. Almost. “Well,” he chokes, astonished. There’s a moment where he raises his eyes in the direction of the car, stares for a few seconds, and then turns back to her, seemingly recovered. He reaches inside his pocket and pulls out a card. “Tell you what, you keep that. In case you ever need us again.” and then he winks, bids her goodbye and walks back to his unit.

Liz decides she doesn’t feel bad for his ego anymore.

“Can you believe these guys?” she huffs as she pulls herself into the car, clicking her seatbelt into place and leaning back into the headrest. She’s expecting some sort of snarky remark or mumbled response, and once she doesn’t get any, she pries one eye open to find a very stone-cold faced agent Ressler looking down at her. “What?”

“What?” he repeats, perplexed. His eyes are angry flashes of green that stand out far too pleasantly against his black suit. Liz swallows dryly. “Are you serious?” he presses.

“Uhm… yes?” she offers, just as perplexed as he is. Ressler turns fully towards her, his large shoulders straining against the seat belt, his face gathering a faint, irate redness. “What’s up with you?”

“What’s up with _me_?” he spits back, and Liz feels the need to sit up straighter. “What the hell was that back there?”

“S.W.A.T. debriefing.” She says helpfully, feeling suddenly spiteful. “What did it look like?”

“It looked like you were hitting on the commander of the unit,” he bites back, not missing a beat, his brow arching almost accusatorily.

Liz takes a second to register the tenseness in his body, the anger in his words. How his hand is gripping the wheel as if the only thing holding it together. She raises her chin in new-found confidence. “And if I was?”

He falls silent at that, mouth opening and closing all of 3 times. He hangs his head and laughs inwardly, his shoulders shaking with the movement, barely any sound coming out. When he looks at her again, his grin is so poisonous she feels sick just looking at it.

He seems like he’s going to say something, and she has the raging urge to grab the blankets on the back of the car and slide under them. He grips the steering wheel a little harder, looks at her for a little longer, and then turns in his seat and punches the key into the ignition.

They’re on the road before she can fully register what happened.

.

A bomb blows up much too close for their own sake, and Liz can do little but hope for the best as she is unceremoniously thrown into the air and tries desperately to remember how they taught you to fall back in Quantico. Of course, in Quantico, you had mattresses.

In real life, if you’re lucky, you get something else.

For the purpose of proving the law of gravity, she feels herself fall and land harshly somewhere in their ratio, her whole body vibrating relentlessly. Her head rings loudly and she does a quick mental check – head arms hands legs feet – but instead of finding fewer limbs she finds some more, like a leg between her own and something hard beneath her hands, maybe also a rough texture against her face. She thinks she hears someone call her name in the background, very, very far away, but the mattress in Quantico never called out her name and so she thinks she must be imagining this, too, along with the extra limbs.

“Liz god _damnit_ -“ the mattress shakes her violently, and she is _sure_ it never used to do that before. “Liz! Fuck, can you hear me? Liz!”

 _Yes, yes, keep your voice down_ she thinks although she can barely understand it as it is, and then she opens her eyes to find not a mattress but an agent, and oh, he seems familiar too- “Ressler?” she asks, or mouths, not sure she was able to cast the word out.

“Yes. Yes, it’s me. Hey,” he calls, one hand moving from her cheek to the back of her head and the other pushing tightly at her back, pressing her further onto him. “Are you ok? Answer me.”

She nods in effort, the ringing starting to let up, her surroundings starting to come to her. She more or less assumes Ressler pulled her to fall on top of him instead of on the ground, her legs sore from where they tangled with his and her hands scrapped from where she tried to cushion her fall, but she doesn’t feel any other injuries to account for. She forces her eyes to focus on the man under her, his expression one of pure fear, and moves to push off so she can take a proper look at the damage he suffered.

“No-“ he pleads, a little pained. His arm closes around her back, and his eyes are agitatedly running over her face. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Liz nods again, setting a hand on him for steadiness. Ressler moves the hand from her head to cover hers on his chest, breathing slower now as the adrenaline leaves his veins. He squeezes her hand firmly in his, and Liz thinks, _okay. Okay, I love._

_I love._

.

“Yeah Chris, it’s no problem.” Ressler is mumbling distractedly at his phone as they finish paperwork for the day. Liz checks the clock – past 9 p.m. – and thanks whatever god still looks out for her that she asked the nanny to put Agnes down for the night when she inspected the pile of files swarming her desk. “No, of course you can. Yeah- no, no, I’m at home but I’ll take the couch this time.” More distracted mumbling, a few _yes_ and _no_ and _I’ll pick something on the way up, you still have the spare key? Okay, see you there._

Liz frowns harder at her paperwork, determined not to pry. Ressler hangs up and sighs wearily, rubbing a hand over the creases on his forehead.

“You okay there, sport?” she asks in spite of herself. She’s pretty sure Chris is a guy’s name, but if she’s wrong and he starts telling her about how his girlfriend got the spare key to his apartment she might just have to hijack Cooper’s office and drown herself in whisky.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s just-“ he chuckles, a little groggy. “My cousin is in town and he’s crashing at my place again. With his girlfriend. Which is no problem-“ he hurries to add. “It’ just that- I mean.” He shakes his head. “Nevermind.”

“What? Tell me about it!” Liz replies, now grinning widely at the thought of a platonic _cousin_ and not an overly touchy blonde who makes him _moan_ and- okay, let’s not go there again.

“It’s just that they’re a new couple, you know?” he asks, smirking a little. Liz shrugs in response like _no, I don’t._ “Well… let’s just say my poor couch can barely handle one person sleeping there, let alone two people _not_ sleeping.”

Much like with a bomb, Liz suddenly can’t escape the blaring, deafening ringing in her ears. She blinks once, twice, fists her hand in the casefile in front of her. She reads enough of his lips to make out _they were here, I don’t know, I think in-_ “The second week of November.” she supplies, her mouth dry and clammy and foreign. He frowns at her over a misplaced search warrant, asks “How would you-“ but she’s up and out of the office before he can even finish asking.

.

She’s more or less expecting a not so pleasant reaction when she bangs on his door a week later, after countless hours of trying to determine which of her heartache to attribute to a misunderstanding and which of it to determine as justifiable considering their unforgiving circumstances. She gives up at the fifth day, buys his favorite beer on the sixth, deems it undrinkable and gets peperoni pizza on the seventh.

And now she’s here.

“What do you want?” is all Ressler asks when he opens the door. He doesn’t acknowledge the pizza and beers, eyes pointing directly at her less than amused face at his response. She faintly registers the sound of music coming from his apartment, and then a little less faintly.

“Is that- uhm. Are you listening to Vivaldi?”

Ressler blinks at her, unresponsive. He moves one hand to lean against the doorframe, successfully blocking her passage, and she tries not to recoil too much. “What do you want, Keen?”

“I. I-“ she holds up the beers, as if the blue antique label and the drips of condensation on the bottles could speak for themselves. “I brought these.” She offers.

Ressler blinks at her some more, and then squares his jaw, face calmly impenetrable. “Okay. If I let you in, are you going to run away for some inexplicable reason again, or are you going to _explain_ what the hell is wrong with you?”

She does recoil at that, diminishing under his stare. Beating around the bush wasn’t particularly his thing, but he had been doing it less and less lately. Liz tries not to focus on the part she might have played in that. She straightens her shoulders and extends the pizzas his way, a peace offering, and only then does he contemplate them. “I’ll only run away if you keep playing 4 seasons. A bit cliché, I find.”

He clicks his tongue. “The music stays. Fits your bipolar behavior.”

She has to laugh at that. “Deal.” As if she wouldn’t have relented to any condition he imposed.

He moves off the doorframe and allows her in, one hand on her back guiding her inside to break her concentration, and when the door closes behind her, she’s far less certain of what she came here to do in the first place. She’s also far hungrier.

“Pizza cutter’s in the drawer,” he starts, as if reading her mind. By the look on his face, she suspects he is. “I’ll get the bottle opener.”

She nods absently, setting the pizzas on the counter and busying herself by cutting them into eights. She realizes half way through the pizzas are already cut, but she’s going to take every opportunity she can get to ground herself into less of a blabbering idiot who does little more than run when her chest tightens into itself. She hums along to the end of Spring as it dies down into Summer, if only to fill the silence Ressler is giving her as he cranks open the beers.

They don’t talk much as she brings the pizzas over to the couch where he already took up his spot on the far end. They’re not touching anywhere and yet Liz feels his presence settling over her shoulders, pressing her down into this moment, some inescapable and unmistakable emotion creeping into every second of their semi-awkward meal. She munches on the pizza – suppressing her face over the peperoni – and he notices but doesn’t offer an apology, hell bent on choosing silence and Vivaldi over conversation and a movie.

She suffers through it for all of five minutes before breaking.

“This couch is a pull-out, right?” she asks, swallowing around a much too large bite of pizza. He’s not looking at her. “This where your cousin stayed?”

“Don’t worry Liz, I cleaned it the day after.” Ressler replies, annoyance lingering in his tone. So she’s not off to a great start. Liz nods, registering this.

She changes courses. “I thought I was in love with you.”

She half does it on purpose, in part to get a reaction out of him and in part to let that finally, finally _go_. He freezes with a beer in hand mid-way to his mouth, and doesn’t bother covering his surprise as he looks at her. His lips open a little, and he swallows dryly, but doesn’t say anything.

“I mean, we sort of, uhm. We grew into it, right?” she asks, scrambling to get a hold of herself. Her hand starts sweating where it’s clenching her knee. “I thought so, anyways. One day I woke up and I realized I couldn’t live without you, which is _so stupid_ and _cliché_ and-“

“Liz.” he stops her, strangled. The bottle is still mid-air, and Vivaldi quiets down to a slow, unhurried rhythm. “What are you-“ he starts, squinting at her, and doesn’t break eye contact as he sets the beer down. He looks like he wants to continue but seems to be just as lost for words as she is.

Liz thinks, _okay. So maybe I wasn’t wrong._ “I thought you felt the same. So did everyone, apparently,” she adds, if only to cement her own confidence in this whacky conversation. “And, uhm. I came here, because I wanted to tell you, something. I wanted to tell you something, I wasn’t sure what, but I wanted to tell you.” Vivaldi starts picking up momentum, and Autumn booms brightly in her eardrums. “And I came over here. To do that.”

At his confusion, she grins. “Not now, I mean. Actually, sort of now. But uhm, no- last November. After that idiot hit you over the head with a lamp and you went down like a ton of bricks-“

“I did _not_ go down like a ton of bricks-“

“You were _unconscious,_ Don.” She answers, exasperated, and his lips morph into something of a smile. “Anyway. I came. And, well. I found, uhm, not you.”

“Not me.” He repeats after her, as clarification. He’s puzzled.

“Yes, not you. I didn’t find anyone, actually. But I _heard_ Chris.”

And there, it’s out. For all the bravery that took, she’s too much of a coward to explain further, or even look him in the eye as he faces her, so she grabs another slice, angrily picking at the peperoni because she does _not_ deserve this punishment anymore, and moves to lift off the couch to fiddle through the back of his fridge for the beer she knows he keeps for her. Liz makes it a point to continue avoiding his eyes as she all but inhales the slice she has in hand, and when she sits back down, she reaches for the bottle opener on the table in front of them.

He stops her gently with a hand on top of hers, halting her mission, and she still doesn’t look up. Simply breathes deeply and holds it, waiting for something to break in the rising tension inside her. He squeezes her hand, and she is filled with a frightening fear crippling her into silence, suddenly finding herself teetering on the edge of a very, very high cliff.

She doesn’t want to find out what is on the other side of it.

He waits, patiently, for her. Like he always has, she admits miserably, and feeling backed up into a spiky wall, she looks up at him, thinking that no matter what she finds there, at the very least his green eyes are pretty enough for her to fool herself into happiness.

Ressler looks straight back at her, hand pressing down on hers a little more. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Liz wants to straighten into a less ridiculous position, but also really, really doesn’t want to let go of his hand, pretty much the only thing grounding her to earth. She remains half hunched over the table, looking up at him, gaping like a fish caught trying to bite the hook. Liz tries to form the words to explain _how do I expose myself to misery when you are the only one keeping it at bay_ or _I’m sorry I couldn’t face you not loving me_ or _do you have any idea how long it took to stop listening to your fucking moans at night_ or _I’m sorry I ruined this but I thought you ruined it first_ , and she’s just about decided not to speak at all when Ressler sighs, lets go of her altogether, rises up off the couch.

Liz thinks, _okay._ So maybe she ruined this with spectacular efficiency all by herself.

She rises also, eyeing her purse on the other side of the room and counting the milliseconds it’ll take for her to grab it and get the _hell_ out of here before he sighs again, louder now. “Come on.” He all but demands, and Liz eyes him, questioning. He doesn’t let up, instead outstretching his hand, a gift. “Winter is my favorite season.”

“I-“

“You, nothing. Get over here.” And when she doesn’t, he grabs her wrist and pulls her towards him to the wide space behind his couch, both arms around her waist but careful not to touch her anywhere else.

Liz raises an eyebrow at him, her hands half touching his chest and the sliver of air between them, before sliding them up his neck and linking them behind him, unsure. He nods, seemingly pleased, and steps a few millimeters closer, and only when he moves again does she realize that _oh_. Dancing. That’s what this is.

Winter bursts into full rhythm, but Ressler doesn’t look as if he’s paying attention. He moves them slowly around the living room, a sharp contrast to the music blaring in the speakers, and Liz gets that horrible, overwhelming urge to _leave, leave, what is this, leave-_

He senses this, somehow, or maybe he doesn’t and he’s just blissfully unaware, but he closes his arms around her an inch tighter, foreheads falling together, and she feels her heart beating madly against her chest, her breathing faltering every few steps.

“Ressler.” A warning? She doesn’t know. If he does, he doesn’t care, instead shaking his head to silence her. Something crawls up her throat, cutting off the air she so urgently needs, and her brain is acutely attuned to the muscle in his shoulders twitching beneath her forearms, his hands burning patterns on her back, his stubble scratching at her cheek. She leans into it, needing the pain to lean onto something, _anything_ that is palpable, and he chuckles lowly against her, the simple movement sending her into a string of chills.

“So you’re _not_ gonna call Mark back, right?” he asks, and she feels the question as she hears it, the words falling dangerously closer to her lips which burst into a wide grin, an electric shock of laughter seeping through her, and he smiles back at her as she laughs and laughs (delirious, hysterical) and hides her face in his neck as she reddens, whatever was rising up her throat pushed down into her stomach, weighing her down into this. This.

“I think I’m good.” She relents as the laughter dies down, pushing as close to him as possible. He hums in response, hugging her more than anything now, the music forgotten as he lazily breathes her in.

.

At around 5 in the morning, she shamelessly puts on his shirt to grab them a glass of water, his eyes never leaving her as he groans at the sight. She smiles back brightly, hurrying through her task to slide back into bed quicker, shuffling over him and kissing up his chest as he mumbled something about _how are you still this energetic_ but she ignores this, just pushing and pushing as she slithers closer, fusing into him, and he rolls them swiftly, surely, one hand on her hip and the other near her head, supporting him. The sight is breathtaking.

(This is where it changes).


End file.
